Well, now we know why Senator Jay Rockefeller is retiring. It’s because he’s gotten to that age where you have to keep a really, really close watch over what you’re babbling: “A senior Democratic senator suggested Wednesday that President Obama’s race factored into opposition to the Affordable Care Act, sparking outrage on the part of one of his Republican colleagues.” Basically, what Rockefeller did here was to wait until a hearing room was almost empty and then snidely suggest that Republican opposition to Obamacare was likely due to the President’s skin color*’**. This did not sit well with Senator Ron Johnson (I said that the room was almost empty):

I have a lot of these, and probably more getting generated tomorrow – but I didn’t want to not get at least one of these done this evening. This clip is of Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who of course came out of nowhere in 2010 to neatly excise Russ Feingold from his Senate seat. Which was personally one of the more satisfying results of the last election cycle: partially because Feingold’s assault on free speech was a constant irritation to me, and partially because the best presents are often the ones that you weren’t expecting.

At any rate, the Senator and I spoke briefly about CPAC. Check out the video.

[YET ANOTHER UPDATE]: Since this post has long since left the front page, I suggest that those of you upset that Jane Yolen has been accurately pegged as a hateful bigot go here instead to waste time writing bitter screeds about censorship that will be sent directly to spam… unread*, unloved, and unremembered. Aside from everything else, the site automatically closes threads after a fixed length of time; this will give you a few extra days to distract you from the spiritual void that forces you to play moth to the flame.

Hey, this is how I got all those donations for the iPad2, remember? I don’t know why it works, either, but it apparently does and I don’t argue with any harmless societal quirk that feeds my gaming habit. Which, unfortunately, seems to be happening with the iPad2, too. Surely there’s a non-iPhone digital video camera that the iPad2 version of iMovies likes…

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[UPDATE] Thanks for the hate mail, folks! Glad to get confirmation that I struck a nerve.

[The Capital Times]: What had you heard about our senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, before you read my piece and what concerns you about the idea of him reading one of your stories to children?

[Jane Yolen]: He is a Republican junior senator associated with the Tea Party. And that makes me think that either he is 1. A True Believer in the Tea Party NoNothingness which frightens me or 2. Kowtowing to it for votes which possibly frightens me more. Since the Tea Party (and alas much of the Republican Party these days) are the ones behind the notions of breaking unions, throwing librarians out of their jobs, and defunding education, I think it is more than a tad bit disingenuous for such politicians to be out in libraries reading books to children who will have no libraries to visit if we listen to the Tea Party.

The book in question was “How do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?” Apparently, the answer is “Only in a proper, progressive manner.” Personally, if I was a children’s author I might be a little more careful about spewing out my elemental hatred of a demographic known for its relatively larger family sizes, but I suppose that Yolen has not yet realized that potential readers can find out about these petty little prejudices these days. Either that, or it’s simply more important to her that she remind the world that courtesy and politeness only be shown to what Yolen apparently considers real people: that is to say, non-conservatives. (more…)

Let me tell you a tale of the incompetence of Vice President Joe Biden. Trust me, this one is even better than usual.

Once upon a time, back in the days when Joe Biden was a bad Senator instead of a bad Vice President, he had a staffer named Victoria Nourse. Ms. Nourse’s major claim to fame was ‘helping’ to write the (later deemed partially-unconstitutional) Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that was one of Senator Biden’s signature pieces of legislation; ‘helped’ is in square quotes because originally Biden took full credit for the law – like Biden typically does – until he got caught at it in 2007. This was, of course, perhaps a little awkward… but then events transpired in 2008 that Senator Biden became Vice President Biden, which meant that Ms. Nourse could be given a nice consolation prize of a federal judgeship.

This is very entertaining, because it takes real skill to muck up reporting this PPP poll about Scott Walker’s chances in a hypothetical recall election; fortunately, Joe Conason is up to the challenge. Let’s look at what Conason wrote (bolding mine):

Asked whether they would support or oppose [Scott Walker’s] removal from office in a recall election, 50 percent said yes and only 47 percent said no.

The same poll found that Wisconsin voters are also apparently sorry that they replaced progressive Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold last fall with a tea party extremist named Ron Johnson. Today, they would re-elect Feingold with a comfortable margin over any Republican…

I’ve already gotten a screenshot of this, by the way. Just in case Truthdig decides to memory-hole the entire thing.

Anyway, again: Conason is reporting that 50% of PPP’s respondents favor a recall of Walker. So far, so good for the Democrats. PPP also reports that in that hypothetical election Feingold would win. OK, piece of data to consider. But what Conason did here – and probably deliberately, seeing as he didn’t link to the original poll – was falsely claim that this means that Feingold would win re-election against Senator Ron Johnson, despite the fact that PPP did not poll that hypothetical match-up. You see, Feingold was never governor of Wisconsin, so he cannot be re-elected to that position. The poll is strictly about the Wisconsin recall situation*; not about Ron Johnson. Perhaps PPP will poll a hypothetical rematch between the two, although why anybody would bother is beyond me completely (it’s not going to matter before 2016 anyway); but until then, it’s dishonest to use polling results in this manner.

Yes, ‘dishonest.’ Remember, we know that Conason meant this poll, because the numbers that he did specifically quote (but not source) are the same; and we know that Conason meant Feingold’s re-election as Senator, because he did specifically use the word “re-elect.” If Joe Conason tries to claim that this was all an innocent mistake – which he undoubtedly will – then said claim should be seen as the calculated insult to his readers’ intelligence that it is.

*As to the poll itself: yup, pretty harsh. Guess we’ll see in July how those legislature recall numbers hold up, huh? And the obvious problem that the Democrats face in exploiting their hypothetical advantage is left as an exercise for the reader: I don’t give free hints to the Left unless it suits me.

The topic was on Obamacare: specifically, its repeal. Senator Johnson had an article in the Wall Street Journal today on his personal issue with health care rationing; we discussed that, the ongoing judicial struggles over Obamacare, and what activists can do to help resolve this problem.

Senator Johnson’s decision to run for office in the first place can be ‘credited’ with the passage of Obamacare, which is news that will no doubt delight supporters of former Senator Russ Feingold. Also, some further details of the future economic effects of the health care legislation can be found here, via the American Action Forum. Check it out.

Gail Collins of the NYT wants to know why Wisconsinites are poised to throw Democratic Senator Russ Feingold – a man whom she categorizes as ‘independent’ – out of office in favor of Ron Johnson.

Ask me an easy one. It’s because this self-proclaimed ‘independent’ is a big-government liberal who voted for a stimulus that’s hurt employment, a cap-and-trade bill that would have gutted American industry and business, and a health care monstrosity that seems almost designed to kill off old people in carload lots*. Add to that the minor detail that Feingold is personally responsible for one of the worst assaults on the First Amendment in recent history**, and, well, he’s earned his bad electoral karma.